Andrew Murray's Secrets Of Faith ናሙና

When the Lord chose His twelve disciples, it was “that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach” (Mark 3:14). A life in fellowship with Him prepared them for the work of preaching.

So deeply were the disciples conscious of this great privilege, that when Christ spoke of His leaving them to go to the Father their hearts were filled with great sorrow. The presence of Christ had become indispensable to them; they could not think of living without Him. To comfort them, Christ gave them the promise of the Holy Spirit, assuring them of His heavenly presence in a sense far deeper and more intimate than they ever had known on earth. The law of their first calling remained unchanged: their unbroken fellowship with Him was the secret of their power to preach and to testify of Him.

When Christ gave them the Great Commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, He added the words, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The same principle stands for all His servants, for all time: without the experience of His presence with us, our preaching has no power. The secret of our strength is the living testimony that Jesus Christ is every moment with us, inspiring, directing and strengthening us. This is what made the disciples so bold in preaching Him as the Crucified One in the midst of His enemies. They never for a moment regretted His bodily absence, for they had Him with them, and in them, in the divine power of the Holy Spirit.

Every disciple of Jesus Christ who desires to take part in the victory that overcomes the world needs time, faith and the Holy Spirit to convince him that, as the servant of the omnipotent Lord Jesus, he is to take part in the work. He is to count literally upon the daily experience of being “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might” (Eph. 6:10). The word of promise gives the courage to obey implicitly the word of command.

But remember that this power is never meant to be experienced as if it were our own. It is only as Jesus Christ as a living Person dwells and works with His divine energy in our own hearts and lives that there can be power in our preaching as a personal testimony. When Christ said to Paul, “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9), Paul could say what he had never learned to say before: “When I am weak, then am I strong” (12:10). The disciple of Christ who understands that all power has been entrusted by the Father to Jesus Christ, to be received from Him hour by hour, will feel the need and experience the power of that precious word, “I am with you always”—I, the Almighty One.

For it’s only when His servants show in their lives that they obey Him in all His commands can they expect the fullness of His power and His presence to be with them. Only when they themselves are living witnesses to the reality of His power to save and to keep from sin can they expect to experience His abiding presence, and the power to train others to the life of obedience that He asks.

The living experience of the presence of Jesus is an essential element in preaching the gospel. If this becomes clouded, work becomes a human effort, without the freshness and power of the heavenly life. Nothing can bring back the power and blessing but a return to the Master’s feet so that He may breathe into the heart, in divine power, His blessed word, “I am with you always!”